Wild Hope Homestead

As spring marches on I am slowly getting veges planted in the little pockets of time that I have. The Little Fulla doesn’t often sleep for very long at a time during the day, so when he does I throw on some gardening clothes and almost run outside and hack into things like there’s no tomorrow. That is, after showering, eating, doing washing, doing the dishwasher, etc, etc… If I can get a few things planted or pruned or a patch of hideous weeds pulled out then it’s a good day. Time is precious.

While I have been planting capsicums, chillies and tomatoes, The Husband has had other ideas. Last Friday evening he announced that he was going outside to start clearing up in the garage. I was very pleased. I just about fell off the chair. It has been a big mess in there since we moved. He was at it again on Saturday, so I went out with The Little Fulla to have a look. That’s when I learnt that “clearing up the garage” is husband code for “clearing my workbench so I can build a sky rocket”. Oh dear. The mind boggles. Needless to say, I wrote The Husband a to-do list of some of the things I would like him to do. They are infinitely less exciting and dangerous than building a sky rocket, but are rather more essential.

As for the vege planting, I have stuck to my vege plan so far. I liked my old way of planting vege crops in nice straight rows. It gave me a sense of orderliness and visual satisfaction. But I have learned that it isn’t the best way to plant your crops. Mixing crops with beneficial flowering plants, spreading crops around the vege garden and planting some in groups instead of rows is supposed to help with pests and diseases as well as improve production. Admittedly, I’ve known this for a while, even if I didn’t know much about it, but I had a kind of disdain for such haphazard garden beds. Oh, the struggle with my orderly nature. The funny thing is, this season I have put more time and detail into creating my mixed vege bed plan than ever before, so that is satisfying my orderliness for now.

The vege garden now contains 11 tomatoes, 7 capsicums, 2 chillies, 2 pumpkins and some carrot seeds, in addition to the potatoes, spring onions and garlic. Looking at my seed trays, the next in will be cucumbers and beans, followed by lettuces and more tomatoes. The pumpkins had a narrow escape from death. They were sitting innocently on the lounge window sil when the fur child launched herself through the improperly fastened fly screen over the neglectfully open window in the middle of the night to get inside. The falling screen broke the pumpkin pot and a bit of another seed tray and the biggest pumpkin plant was knocked. I figured I should just plant it since it had already been disturbed and am hoping it doesn’t succumb to fatal injuries.

Meanwhile, I am waging war against the weeds…